This blog is devoted to evaluating vulnerable Democratic candidates, political news, law and current affairs. Author is a Political consultant specializing in opposition research for conservative candidates, attorneys and PACS at the local, state, and federal level.
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
― Patrick Henry

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Must Read Editorial: Presidential Power

Obama campaigned as a consistent critic of the Bush administration’s
understanding of executive power — and a critic with a background in
constitutional law, no less. But apart from his disavowal of
waterboarding (an interrogation practice the Bush White House had
already abandoned), almost the entire Bush-era wartime architecture has
endured: rendition is still with us, the Guantánamo detention center is
still open, drone strikes have escalated dramatically, and the Obama
White House has claimed the right — and, in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki,
followed through on it — to assassinate American citizens without
trial.

These moves have met some principled opposition from the left. But the
president’s liberal critics are usually academics, journalists and
(occasionally) cable-TV hosts, with no real mass constituency behind
them.

The majority of Democrats, polls suggest,
have followed roughly the same path as the former Yale Law School dean
Harold Koh, a staunch critic of Bush’s wartime policies who now serves
as a legal adviser to the State Department, supplying constitutional
justifications for Obama’s drone campaigns. What was outrageous under a
Republican has become executive branch business-as-usual under a
Democrat.

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N.B. I am one of those addled academics who, despite not being terribly
left-wing, believes that Obama has acted unconstitutionally on major
questions on perhaps a score of occasions. I genuinely believe that the
civil liberties of Americans stand in peril. I also think that the scope
of the President's claim of unilateral authority to make war anywhere
in the world is, not only breathtaking, but also dangerous in the long
run to the entire planet. And to think that Obama was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize! (But the Nobel Peace Prize committee has made other odd
choices -- for example, Henry Kissinger.)

Quotes

"If it's smart to look at the Carfax history of a used car before buying it, why should anyone object to discovering the history of politicians before electing them to serve you?" Stephen Marks

"I believe that public office is the noblest of professions, but I also believe we must hold public officials accountable. Exposing the full truth about them-the good and the bad-ultimately makes for better-educated voters and a stronger democracy." Stephen Marks in Politics Magazine.